Effective Remote Teams
Lessons From Successful Remote Companies Like Doist, GitLab, and Zapier
Over the last five years, remote work has evolved from being a temporary necessity to a permanent feature of modern organizations. It has enabled companies to access talent globally while empowering individuals with unprecedented flexibility and agency over their time. As someone who has worked remotely for the majority of their career, I am familiar with both the upsides and downsides of remote work. Not all tasks can or should be done remotely. However, the vast majority of modern knowledge work can be accomplished in a remote setting.
How effectively and successfully work can be done depends on how organizations structure and manage their approach toward remote work. I decided to explore how Doist, GitLab, and Zapier work remotely. These companies have been remote from the start, and they have successfully delivered amazing products used by millions of users while growing their distributed teams around the world. I would like to share what I have learned about effective remote teams from my own experience and from examining these companies.
Successful Remote Companies
Doist
Doist has a remote, distributed team of 68 spread across more than 25 countries.
Doist builds popular apps like Todoist and Twist used by millions to enhance and manage their productivity. They focus on helping users manage their time, set priorities, and collaborate effectively without feeling overwhelmed, making it easy to stay on track wherever you are and focus on what matters most.
GitLab
GitLab has a remote, distributed team of 1,300 people spread across more than 60 countries.
GitLab builds and manages an open-source software development platform that helps teams create, test, and share software all in one place. It makes it easier to write and manage code, track tasks, and work together on projects. GitLab also helps teams quickly test and launch new updates, so they can improve their software faster.
Zapier
Zapier has a remote, distributed team of 800 people across 40 countries.
Zapier builds a popular automation tool with over 2,000 integrations used by millions to simplify and accelerate their workflows, saving time on repetitive, routine tasks. It works by creating "Zaps," which are workflows that link actions in one app to triggers in another, making it easy to customize workflows for your specific needs.
Remote Work Requires Excellent Communication
Effective communication is especially critical in remote settings.
While most teams can access the tools needed to facilitate remote work, only teams that create the right environment thrive. Remote teams must operate differently than collocated teams (where everyone is in the same place). The main factor influencing their success is how they communicate. Effective communication connects people, ideas, and actions in a way that moves everyone forward. Even the most talented teams and individuals can struggle in remote environments without the right communication skills, practices, and processes because a lack of clarity can quickly cause confusion and chaos. Therefore, the threshold for effective communication has to be much higher. The organization needs to have clear guidelines on how, when, and where to communicate information, and individuals need to have strong verbal and written communication skills.
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Master Asynchronous Communication
The majority of remote work is asynchronous. This allows everyone to participate in conversations, collaboration, and decision-making, no matter where they are or what time zone they are in. It gives them time to process information and respond thoughtfully. However, communicating asynchronously takes more effort and skill than real-time communication. Team members have to be intentional about how they request and share information, ensuring they provide enough context to their team members. They also need to judge when things can and cannot be discussed asynchronously.
At GitLab, any information that needs to be presented is pre-recorded and sent to the relevant team members. This allows people to ask clarifying questions, identify discussion topics, assign tasks, etc. without wasting the limited meeting times each team has.
At Zapier, team members are specific and concise when messaging team members. They ensure they are clear about what they need from people when they need it, and what they are looking for you're looking for to ensure that there is enough context available.
At Doist, teams use threaded communication channels to keep discussions organized by topic so team members can catch up and contribute no matter what time zone they work in. It makes it easy for them to find information and get context into the original conversation.
Fortunately, most things can be done asynchronously. Going further, most things can be done better asynchronously. The extra time to let things sink in, to think, to reflect, and to craft an appropriate response, really pays off.
– Gonçalo Silva, Doist CTO
Use Synchronous Communication Wisely
For remote, distributed teams, time is precious. There are few windows of time when all team members are available. This is usually when real-time communication happens (meetings, phone calls, etc.). However, meetings must be efficiently managed to ensure they are useful and productive. Therefore, teams have to structure meetings with a clear agenda outlining the purpose (What do we want to achieve in this meeting? Ex. To make a decision) and outcome (What outcomes will indicate that we’ve succeeded in our purpose? Ex. A decision has been made and documented).
At Doist, synchronous communication (video calls, real-time chat, in-person meetings) is reserved for situations where real-time conversation is necessary such as discussing complex topics, getting perspective, raising concerns, etc.
GitLab has a company call daily. The focus giving people all the updates they need. Anyone who can’t attend can read the company call agenda or watch the recording on their internal YouTube channel.
At Zapier, before meetings, each team member documents their planned tasks and results, unforeseen issues, and what’s in the pipeline for next week. This minimizes questions and confusion, ensuring meeting time is productive.
Document Purposefully And Effectively
Documentation is vital for remote, asynchronous teams because it’s not as easy to quickly clarify details or ask questions, especially when your team may be spread across different time zones. Therefore, people have to make a habit of documenting their work, and including sufficient detail for others to understand what they need. When workflows are precisely documented and accessible, everyone stays on the same page, and there is less potential back-and-forth. Therefore, companies need documentation systems (Coda, Notion, etc.), along with clear guidelines, processes, and protocols at the organizational, team, and individual levels.
Documentation is a shared responsibility. The goal is to make it easy to find, access, and reference the information when needed. When everyone adds their input, the team gets a more detailed picture of actions and decisions (past, present, and future). This is critical for many tasks, such as planning, brainstorming, retrospectives, etc. What works for one team may not work for another. The most effective format for documentation depends on how your team is structured, what your team does, and which communication channels work best for your team.
Zapier has found relentless documentation to be key not only to smooth onboarding but healthy workflows throughout a project. Proper documentation is extremely important for software engineers, whether it’s related to the codebase or not. You don’t want your remote developers to get stuck on a small issue and have to stop work entirely until they can get in touch with your team lead or another developer
— Bryan Helmig, Zapier Co-founder
Trust Matters On Remote Teams
Remote teams cannot function effectively without trust and accountability.
Trust is critical when working with a distributed team. The main question for management is often “How do I know if people are actually working?” There’s often a fear that the lack of visibility means that remote workers could be spending their time doing non-productive things. In an office environment, it’s easy to use visible busyness as a proxy for productivity: You can see people doing things, so you assume that they must be doing their jobs. In the absence of physical visibility, some companies resort to digital visibility (keystrokes, message replies, emails sent, meetings attended, etc.) to gauge how hard people are working. This creates resentment from team members because it gives them a clear signal that management does not trust them, which can rapidly destroy morale and motivation.
Trust is important for everyone. No one wants to work with people who they distrust or people who distrust them. In remote environments, you must trust that people are doing their best work until proven otherwise. You have to believe that they can responsibly manage their time. Rather than tracking pseudo-productivity metrics (things that are not correlated with individual effort) and micromanaging, evaluate people based on metrics that are relevant to their work. A high-trust culture focuses on empowering people to do their best work instead of wasting time trying to make sure people are “actually working.”
At Doist, every newcomer essentially starts with a “tank” full of trust. In order to keep that tank from going empty, you need to communicate regularly. Radio silence on a team member’s part is often an instant trust breaker but, as a manager, I also need to be highly conscientious of communicating — it is a two-way street.
– Brenna Loury, Doist Head of Marketing
Focus On Results, Not Hours
The number of hours spent on a task does not always correlate with the results achieved. Different problems require different types of effort. You may spend several hours just thinking about how to solve it and only an hour actually solving the problem. If we’re just measuring activity, it looks like you did an hour of work, but that does not account for all the intellectual effort required to do that work. Companies should not push people to work longer hours, they should push them to get better results and equip them with the means to do so. The focus should be on how individual and team efforts drive the business goals: What has been achieved? How has it moved us forward? How close are we to the desired outcome?
What matters is not the number of hours you work—it’s the work that gets done.
— Sij Sijbrandij, Gitlab Founder
Hire Selectively
Trust starts with hiring the right people. It’s hard to evaluate whether someone is really trustworthy from the interview process alone. You can only trust your judgment and give them the benefit of the doubt. People want to feel trusted and valued. No one likes to work in an environment where their efforts are constantly being questioned or scrutinized. They want to be judged based on the outcome of their work. You can only build and solidify trust with strong communication practices.
Micromanaging is inefficient at any company, but at a remote company, it’s simply not an option. You need to hire people you can trust from day one.
— Allan Christensen, Doist COO
Remote Work Creates More Opportunities For Deep Work
Beyond the obvious benefits, such as cost savings, convenience, and access to talent, remote work allows people to do focused work in a way that is not possible in most offices. Remote teams have the benefit of having uninterrupted periods where they can focus entirely on the task at hand. These are the times when their work schedules do not overlap with their team members in different time zones. This is the time they can focus on deep work that requires focused, undistracted effort on tasks that bring long-term value.
In contrast, “shallow work” refers to low-value, often reactive tasks—emails, meetings, and minor requests—that hinder the focused thinking essential for tackling complex challenges. In asynchronous settings, remote workers can work more effectively and manage distractions because they can strategically dedicate specific periods for deep work, where they can focus on high-value tasks without distractions. This builds momentum for high-value tasks while keeping necessary but low-impact tasks contained.
Conclusion
Many teams can work just as effectively (if not better) remotely as they do in person. The real question is not whether remote work is viable but how it can be optimized for the specific needs of teams and organizations. Remote work, when executed intentionally and thoughtfully, creates an environment where people can sustainably optimize their efforts, in a way that accommodates the broader demands of life beyond the workplace. For organizations, the task is not to resist remote work but to harness it to build not just great solutions, but great workplaces.
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